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These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:

Boys read better when there are more girls in their class.

GOP tax plans could affect school funding.

Salem, Mass., tackles the achievement gap.

Chicago schools lead in academic growth.

To read more, click on the following links.

Research & Practice

Positive After-School Settings Can Boost Students’ Academic PerformanceEducation Dive: Well-run after-school programs that offer a positive environment can help students in low-income, urban communities be more academically successful and feel more confident about their schoolwork, a new study finds. Students who had “higher levels of social-behavioral risk” but attended after-school classrooms with more positive environments also became more academically engaged, the researchers found.

Spreading First Aid for Teens’ Mental Health by Training Adults to HelpKQED Mind/Shift: When kids struggle, their emotional problems often unfold in the classroom, affecting their ability to concentrate and straining interactions with teachers and peers. Left untreated, mental health concerns can contribute to high school dropout rates. While educators often want to assist these students, many feel unsure of what to say, especially during a mental health crisis. A community-wide intervention called Mental Health First Aid seeks to equip teachers, parents, and caregivers with the information and skills they need to intervene during a mental health emergency.

Network Effectiveness in Neighborhood CollaborationsMDRC: Federal, state, and local policies focused on neighborhood improvement have long emphasized the need for community organizations to collaborate. But there has been almost no formal measurement of how community organizations work together, whether differences in collaboration and leadership exist across neighborhoods, and how these patterns may influence the problems being addressed. This report examines how specific patterns of partnership promote better-implemented collaborations that in turn can successfully inform public policy.

Around the Nation

When a City Tackles the Achievement GapUsable Knowledge: Political leaders at all levels, in all parties, continually pledge to expand opportunity and close gaps caused by poverty and inequality. But what would it take to really deliver on those promises? One approach is to put children at the center of these aspirations and align community services and resources to give every child an equal chance to succeed through school and into adulthood. We focus on the initiatives in Salem, Mass., as one example of the systems-level re-envisioning that cities are doing.

Chicago Schools Lead Country in Academic Growth, Study FindsEd Week Inside School Research Blog: Exactly 30 years after then-Secretary of Education William J. Bennett labeled Chicago Public Schools the worst in the nation, new research shows that Windy City schools now lead the country in academic growth. The study tracked reading and math test score growth among public school students from 2009 to 2014. Across racial groups, the researchers found that Chicago students learned significantly faster from grades 3 to 8 than did students in nearly all other U.S. districts—gaining about six years’ worth of learning in five years.

New Study Finds That 4.2 Million Kids Experience Homelessness Each YearNPR Ed: Some 4.2 million young people experience unaccompanied homelessness in the course of a year, according to a new study from Chapin Hall a research center at the University of Chicago. One in 30 teens experience some type of homelessness, and this rate grows as teens age: among people aged 18 to 25, one in 10 experience homelessness.

In A City Where 60 Percent of Young Children Live In Poverty, A Ten-Year Plan Aims to Improve Conditions for KidsChalkbeat: A coalition of community groups led by two major foundations has a plan to change the fortunes of Detroit’s youngest citizens. The Hope Starts Here early childhood partnership is a ten-year effort to tackle a list of bleak statistics about young children in Detroit, where more than 60% of children age 0-5 live in poverty. The plan includes promoting the health, development, and wellbeing of Detroit children; supporting their parents and caregivers; increasing the overall quality of early childhood programs; and improving coordination among organizations that work with young kids.

Thousands of Parents Are Enrolling Their Children in Online PreschoolThe Hechinger Report: Research has found that quality early learning experiences are critical for children. In particular, students who attend high-quality, center-based preschool are more likely to graduate from high school and less likely to be held back. Now, a small but growing number of nonprofits and for-profit companies are saying they can deliver at least some of these experiences — and benefits — via the internet, and thousands of parents are signing up.

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